Bébée; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes

She had her little winter cloak of frieze and her wooden shoes and her little white cap with the sunny curls rippling out of it in their pretty rebellion. She had her little lan...

The next day, waking with a radiant little soul as a bird in a forest wakes in summer Bébée was all alone in the lane by the swans' water. In the gray of the dawn all the good f...

"It is you!" she said, with a little cry, as she saw her friend of the silk stockings leaning on a gate midway in the green and solitary road that leads to Laeken.

She opened the lattice and wished him good day, with a laugh. It was so pleasant to be woke by him, and to think that no one in all the world could ever call one a child any more.

When one has not father, or mother, or brother, and all one's friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life cannot be very easy, nor its crusts very many at any time.

"If I could save a centime a day, I could buy a pair of stockings this time next year," thought Bébée, locking her shoes with her other treasures in her drawer the next morning,...

It was market day; there were many strangers. Flowers were in demand. The copper pieces were ringing against one another all the hours through in her leathern bag. The cobbler w...

But the next noon-time brought him to the market stall, and the next also, and so the summer days slipped away, and Bébée was quite happy if she saw him in the morning time, to...

"I remembered it was your name-day, child Here are half a dozen eggs," said one of the hen wives; and the little cross woman with the pedler's tray added a waxen St. Agnes, colo...

"To be Gretchen, you must count the leaves of your daisies," he said to her, as he painted,--painted her just as she was, with her two little white feet in the wooden shoes, and...

She sat quite still and upright in the wagon with the dark lands rushing by her. She never spoke at all. She had a look that frightened him upon her face. When he tried to touch...

Then he took her to dine at one of the wooden cafés under the trees. There was a little sheet of water in front of it and a gay garden around. There was a balcony and a wooden s...

So, though she had a wakeful, restless night, full of strange fantasies, none the less was she out in her garden by daybreak; none the less did she sweep out her floor and make...

"There is none to do, Jeannot. They want so little in this time of the year--the flowers," said she, lifting her head from the sweet-peas she was tying up to their sticks.

The next day she had her promised book hidden under the vine-leaves of her empty basket as she went homeward, and though she had not seen him very long or spoken to him very muc...

One day in the May weather she sat within doors with a great book upon her table, but no sight for it in her aching eyes. The starling hopped to and fro on the sunny floor; the...

The wheat was reapen in the fields, and the brown earth turned afresh. The white and purple chrysanthemums bloomed against the flowerless rose-bushes, and the little gray Michae...

In the deserted lane by the swans' water, under the willows, the horses waited to take him to Mechlin; little, quick, rough horses, with round brass bells, in the Flemish fashio...

On a sudden impulse Flamen, going through the woodland shadows to the city, paused and turned back; all his impulses were quick and swayed him now hither, now thither, in many c...

The snow was deep, and the winds drove the people with whips of ice along the dreary country roads and the steep streets of the city. The bells of the dogs and the mules sounded...

Her stranger from Rubes' land was a great man in a certain world. He had become great when young, which is perhaps a misfortune. It indisposes men to be great at their maturity....

So it came to pass that Bébée's day in the big forest came and went as simply almost as any day that she had played away with the Varnhart children under the beech shadows of Ca...

But Bébée, who only saw in the sun the sign of daily work, the brightness of the face of the world, the friend of the flowers, the harvest-man of the poor, the playmate of the b...

The children were all gathered about her gate in the dusky dewy evening; they met her with shouts of welcome and reproach intermingled; they had been watching for her since firs...

The winter went by, and the snow-drops and crocus and pale hepatica smiled at her from the black clods. Every other springtime Bébée had run with fleet feet under the budding tr...

The village was very quiet; a dog barking afar off and a cow lowing in the meadow were the only living things that made their presence heard; the pilgrims had not returned.

Her little face was pale as she sat among her glowing autumn blossoms, by the side of the cobbler's stall; and when the Varnhart children cried at the gate to her to come and pl...

"I will let her alone, and she will marry Jeannot," thought Flamen; and he believed himself a good man for once in his life, and pitied himself for having become a sentimentalist.